


A Million Particles of Light

by simplyprologue



Series: Careful the Tale You Tell (Children Will Listen) [1]
Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: But what else is new?, F/M, From Angst to Fluff, Midnights and Sunrises, More Heavy-Handed Nature Metaphors With Emily, Motherhood, Post-Series, Pre-Series, Season/Series 02, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-05
Updated: 2015-01-27
Packaged: 2018-03-05 10:58:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3117629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyprologue/pseuds/simplyprologue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>It had never occurred to her before, to be someone's mother. To have a child, a piece of herself separate and apart.</i> Or, moments during the seven years it takes MacKenzie to become a mother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. First Midnight

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:** This is less about MacKenzie as a mother and more about how she becomes a mother. Sorkin handed Will a three-season long narrative on fatherhood and being a patriarch, so I'm going to kind of shove Sorkin aside and try to do the same for Mac without having to ignore canon. Although this will probably take some detours...
> 
> Warnings in this chapter for (vague) allusions to alcoholism and abuse. Thanks to Meg, Emily. Pippa, Lisa, and Clare for their input.

It takes less than a week for over two years of her life to break apart, shattering into a million little pieces that she can hardly begin to fathom how to fit back together. MacKenzie refuses to believe that they won’t fit, her and Will.

They’ve fought before, just never like this. Never quietly. Will never runs out of words to say, arguments to make. And she never thought that she would be silent, either, after he asked her to leave his apartment Saturday night. She’s spent a week’s worth of terse broadcasts looking over the fragments and slivers, trying to reassemble them into the relationship they had before she told him about Brian.

But _it didn’t mean anything_ makes his lip curl and _we were only just dating, and then I fell in love with you_ only makes it worse, and the one time she tried convincing him _I only told you because I thought you’d understand, everything is different now_ he left the room. Now she’s trying to figure out if it was _but don’t you get it? I just wanted Brian to like me, I thought I’d get over him,_ or _we can still work together, Will,_ that made him meet with ACN headhunters over dinner.

“They offered you the eight o’clock hour?” she asks, daring to step inside his office for the first time since he left her standing in it Tuesday morning. “I heard,” she says, tightly shrugging her shoulders.

It’s late; the newsroom is left to them, the cleaning crew, and the intern doing the overnight book.

“Ed Marsh is retiring,” is his short reply. “He wants me to replace him.”

“That’s great,” she manages to say, after a stuttering pause that allows a dim smile to blink into existence on her face.

The office chair emits a soft squeak when Will leans back in his chair, propping his feet up on his desk. His limbs moving almost too consciously, he reaches for the top drawer and extracts a pack of Marlboros and his lighter, going through the motions of lighting the tip of cigarette before flickering his eyes towards her.

“I’m not bringing you with me as my EP.”

“I—I know.”

She has the faint imprint of an idea that this might be good for them, if they don’t work together, don’t see each other every day. Maybe it will soften the feelings of betrayal that he has, make him softer towards her, the lying and the cheating and the sleeping with her ex-boyfriend while he was waiting for her to come back from producing out in the field.

(It had been _so easy_. Doing the wrong thing had been unpredictably easy, when CNN sent her out three or four days a week to wrangle local affiliates and she and Brian were chasing down the same stories, winding up at the same bars, staying in the same cheap hotels.

Answer one of Brian’s drunk voicemails, go to his room, get fucked, leave. And then email Will. Until the moment it stopped and shaped itself into something else entirely, and she fell in love with him, and like that point of fact took all her misdeeds, the incredibly easy way she used him, and wiped them away.)

There has to be a way.

“Now you can go overseas, like you’ve been talking about,” Will says, deliberately dispassionate, smoke erupting from his nostrils. “Afghanistan.” He gestures vaguely eastward with the hand carrying the cigarette.

“I would have done that—without leaving you,” Mac manages to get out, her throat constricting around her voice.

That also annoyed him. _I’ve done war reporting before, I just want to go to Baghdad for a few months, I’ll come back._ That, coupled with _honey, I have something I think I should tell you,_ was how Will sat down on his couch with his head in his hands, and told her he thought she should leave, preferably now, unless she had any other revelations she could use as severance.

And thus her life ( _their_ life, shimmering and fragile, splitting down the middle) slipped out between her fingers.

Will snorts. “Now you don’t need to think about it.”

( _Their_ life. Her life with Brian was about trying to prove that she loved him, trying to be good in bed, trying to be better than him in her career. So she pushed past him and trampled over him and tried to be _good_ and MacKenzie isn’t quite so certain if she stopped loving Brian or if she never loved him to begin with, but he figured it out before she did, and broke up with her during a screaming match in the stairwell of his walk-up, so drunk that he nearly sent her down a flight of steps and in the recoil her ankle turned and in a blink she was on her back on the landing, her wrist burning in pain.

Then she went back to him. Again, and again.

With Brian, all she aspired to be was better than him. With Will, she aspired to just be _better_ and for the first time in her life, _better_ included wanting to be _better_ at her personal life, to wear a ring on her finger and have a baby in her belly.)

Swallowing hard, she shifts her weight between her legs and looks down at her shoes. “Just because I’ve been talking about leaving the studio and going back out into the field doesn’t mean I was—”

“No, it’s just easier this way, isn’t it?”

Will’s face is shuttered, almost unrecognizable to her. He’s never been like this before to her.

“I loved doing our show together,” she says, because it’s the truth. And then, because it’s also the truth, even if she feels like she’s crumbling into the barest atomic level of existence. “I’m sure you’ll do great things at ACN.”

For the briefest moment something breaks through, but then it’s gone, and he’s cold and measured. “I’m going to need your key back. To my apartment. Preferably before I leave next week.”

Next week.

Eyes sweeping his office, over the familiar framed pictures and diplomas, the lines of knick-knacks and awards in stark contrast to the disorganized stacks of files and reports, the one lamp in the corner that’s turned on in favor of the overhead light, the drawn blinds. “So our last broadcast, will be next Fri—”

“Friday,” Will says, not letting her finish. Then makes her wait, taking a long drag off his cigarette. “Charlie Skinner wants me on the air with the ACN logo next to my face for a few months before Ed finally retires.”

Mac feels herself nod.

“That makes—sense,” she replies, flinging her hands forwards towards him. “Well, I’m happy for you. You’ve always said you wanted to wind up back at ACN.”

She just thought she’d be going with him.

But she’ll be okay, she thinks, her fingers going numb. The idea of being someone’s wife, of having their children—it was an idea that was newly-formed, barely-tested. She’s only ever wanted to be Will’s wife. To have his children. And now she can’t have him so she no longer wants any of it.

Afghanistan.

She still wants to go to Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan.

When she sits behind her desk in her office a minute later, she looks at the clock hanging over the door. _12:15 AM._ So she catches her breath, folds her shoulders in, and tells herself that this is the first day of the rest of her life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	2. Last Sunrise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **A/N:** And now we skip ahead six years... oops. Takes place directly after "Election Night II" because I'm forever coming up with new and inventive ways to screw them up after the engagement. This is actually something similar to what I originally wanted to do in Part II of "Holding On and Letting Go" but cut during rewrites.

It was only bearable if she lost it _all._ Then it was singular. But to splinter it—to have Will and to have their show but to have lost their credibility and all the rest—makes it into something that she can’t hold onto with two hands. But she’s been waking up from nightmares since they had to retract Genoa, too, and hasn’t slept at all since Leona Lansing refused to accept her resignation.

MacKenzie almost slept.

When Will brought her to his apartment it was nearly four in the morning and her limbs were deadened with exhaustion, her eyes slipping closed as he steered her into his bedroom. But it was all too familiar and unfamiliar all at once, the feeling of his clothes against her skin, the press of his skin warm against her owns, the smell of his cologne where her face rests against his neck. All the familiar tangled with the heavy ring fencing in her finger, the alien feel of his sheets, the strange weight of his body lying next to hers.

She almost slept, but couldn’t, an electric current flaring through her limbs every time she came close as if reminding her that this isn’t _allowed_ , not with everything she’s lost. Sunrise finds her sitting up on top of the bookshelf below the windows of the bedroom, her forehead pressed against the cool glass and her knees brought up to her chest.

“Why are you… all the way over there?”

Still looking out the window, she hears Will roll over in bed, towards his alarm clock. She knows it reads almost 6:30 AM; she looked a few minutes ago. The sky is whitewashed with the pale fingers of dawn, and she’s seen enough sunrises in the past month that she knows that any minute now the sun will be peaking over the horizon, illuminating the windows of the skyscrapers around her.

“I can’t sleep,” she says, just loudly enough. “I’m thinking.”

“Well… don’t do that,” he answers after moment, still sounding only half awake. “Aren’t you cold?”

She should be, wearing nothing but a long-sleeved shirt from his closet and her underwear. But like when she was embedded, being cold is just another means of staying awake, keeping sharp.

There’s _so much._

Much more than _no, I don’t have a boyfriend,_ much more than _I’m sorry honey, I’m too beat to drive back to the city tonight, and CNN comped a room for me,_ so much more _it’s nothing, I just tripped going down the stairs at my apartment_. Much more, when she should have known better.

“I was stabbed in Islamabad. We were covering the October 2009 Shiite protests,” she recites, as if she was reading it off the internal affairs report. “It was my own fault, really. I got caught between the riot police and the demonstrators when the police launched tear gas into the crowd, and I couldn’t see and the next thing I knew someone had—had their hands on me and I fought them but they had a knife.”

It had never occurred to her before, to be someone's mother. To have a child, a piece of herself separate and apart. That maternal instinct, if it truly is an instinct, didn't appear until she was very certain that she was in love with Will. To be separate and apart with _him_ became something she wondered about, constructing faces and mannerisms and speech patterns. And then even years later, when she was certain he hated her, when it stopped being the longing for a flesh-and-blood child and became the ambition of _News Night's_ rebirth under their leadership.

Bits and pieces torn and taken from them but more often than not, lovingly given, to create the promise they made. Separate, and apart, and handing back its own lessons in kind. MacKenzie had gotten quite talented at accepting the reality of the situation.

The fair-haired toddler and hazel-eyed child slipped away from her as they built their home in the newsroom and built themselves into the show, recoiling and smoothing their jagged edges, growing the show, their family, as it forced them to change as well. Her arms were empty but the pain was _bearable_. Because the child was contingent upon having Will.

Her arms will remain empty, in all likelihood.

Will sits up, probably alarmed. “I know, Mac. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t—”

He’s sweet, of course. Sweet and gentle and disarming because he’s Will, and even more so because less than twelve hours ago he fired her and she was ready to abandon it all and so was he, until he wasn’t.

“The Navy doctor told me that due to trauma sustained to my lower abdomen and the amount of adhesions and scar tissue in the area of my uterus, combined with my age, that it’d be highly unlikely I’ll ever conceive children,” she continues, voice still low.

But she wants him to know, that despite what they said last night full disclosure is a virtue. And it’s at their beginning this time, or maybe this is an ending—she can’t quite keep track of the firsts and lasts.

Blinking rapidly, she makes herself look at him, because right now Will is soft and gentle and she’s hard and strained to the point of bursting, and she needs to hit something soft and yielding when it happens. “That’s—that’s why I’m bringing it up. That, and the PTSD diagnosis I was given six weeks after the stabbing… although looking back I can quite clearly tell you I’d been symptomatic for months before it.”

And then more.

“Oh, and I had been all but fired from CNN and was well on my way to a drinking problem at the time that Charlie hired me to save myself. And you.”

Then pausing, Mac searches her tired mind for any more.

“I think that’s everything,” she finishes quietly.

Eyebrows puzzling together he gets out of bed, crossing the few steps from his side of the bed to the windows, looking out them with her. When he finally speaks, his voice is even.

“Well, I knew about the stabbing and the fact that you were all but fired from CNN and I guessed at the drinking problem, considering that your alcohol tolerance went from half a weak martini to about six or seven shots of Jameson… and Charlie all but told me about the PTSD diagnosis and I’m not entirely fazed about the rest, although I will admit that I’m concerned about you especially now that you’re going into what I think is day _three_ of you not sleeping.”

“I thought we wanted children.”

“We did,” he answers shortly, making no attempt to comfort her physically yet. He knows her, she thinks, warily watching his hands. “We can adopt. Or if you want to get really particular about it, we have a horde of young adults to choose from. I’m sure Jenna wouldn’t complain about having someone to pay off her student loans, and she kind of looks like us. Although I think Maggie is definitely the one who needs us the most right—”

“I don’t think I ever really thought about what would come after, if you forgave me.” Her eyes cross between the traffic below to his rumpled state, the wrinkled flannel pajama pants and his uncombed hair. “I’ve been trying to figure out what comes next. I mean, that’s what’s been keeping me up for six years. What comes next? We need to save the show, and the lawsuit is going to be filed in a few hours, and there’s just a lot but I just keep thinking about how I never wanted to be somebody’s wife, somebody’s mother, until I met you. And I’ve spent the last six years convincing myself I’d be terrible at it and now I don’t know what to do.”

It’s said simply, like she’s laying out an argument for the questions in interview prep (not even for something that important, not the A block or the top of the hour) and not like her shoulders are shaking as she struggles not to cry. Will leans close enough to brush her hair out of her face, saying nothing—not that he has to say anything, his face and the earliness of the hour barely hiding the worry etched into his tired face.

“Are you hungry?”

“I mostly just need to actually sleep,” she says with a shrug, wiping under her eyes.  

“Then you still have four or five hours to do that.”

“We need to go into work, you know some of the staff slept under their desks last night and we need to be there when the clerk’s office opens so they’re not—”

“See, this is what I was saying. You take the boys and I’ll take the girls. We already have parenting to do.” Sighing (because it’s not funny but it’s also not the time for this conversation, when they’re both marked by the bruises of exhaustion but he seems to get it, that this needs to be the last of the secrets) he sits on top of the bookshelf, and she presses her toes into his thigh. “And I don’t need you to be anyone more or less than you already are. You don’t even have to be happy, although I’d like it if you are. We have Rebecca for the lawsuit and the Lansings and Charlie for the network and the show. We have strength and health and we’ll steal the rest.”

 _Are you sure?_ she wants to ask. But she doesn’t know if that would be like _I only told you because I thought you’d understand, everything is different now_ and she doesn’t want to undo this, she only wants to make sure that _this_ is the one unquestioned thing she can have.

“I’m sorry.”

“Why?” he asks sharply.

Mac shrugs, wrapping her arms tightly around her knees. “For everything. Just everything, in general. You’ve heard the list.”

Will exhales in a long, drawn-out way. “I’m sorry, too. For everything. I love you.”

Surprising herself, she laughs. “I’m going to need you to keep saying that so I don’t start thinking that is isn’t some sleep-deprived hallucination.” Despite himself, he smiles too. “And I love you too,” she continues, and then reaches to take his hand where it’s planted on the top of the bookshelf. “But you’re sure? It’s a lot, and last night we were all in the middle of it and I goaded you into firing me like I did and then our fight and it’s a lot in one night and if you’re not certain—”

“Do you want me ask you again? Because I _am_ certain and—”

“What?”

He’s entirely serious, squeezing her fingers and looking down at her earnestly.

“I’ll ask you again. Get down on one knee this time, since I won’t be risking wardrobe shrieking about the Armani.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Are _you_ sure?”

“Will, I waited for six years. Eight, if we’re factoring in—I’m sure.” Biting her lip, she unfolds her limbs. “It’s just, it’s not what we thought it would be, when we talked about it years ago, and we can’t go into this thinking that it’s just going to magically fix everything.”

Looking down at the ring again, she wills herself to become accustomed to the alien weight, this massive change.

“Okay, here. Sit.”

And with that, Will scoops her up into his arms, carrying her the brief distance back to the bed and placing her atop the rumpled duvet. Then he’s getting down onto one knee, carding his fingers through his hair and as almost an afterthought, grabbing her left hand to hold between both of his.

“What are you—”

“MacKenzie Morgan McHale—”

“Seriously?”

But it appears he’s determined to do this, ignoring her sudden turn for sarcasm although the look on his face and the bags under his eyes denote that if she keeps interrupting he might cover her mouth. “I fell in love with you the moment we met. The past six—eight and a half—years have taught me that there is absolutely nothing that will alter how much I love you except to make me love you more. I have no idea what the next six months is going to bring and the view from this morning isn’t encouraging, I know. But if you’re still in, then so am I. Will you marry me?”

“Are you really going to make me say yes again?”

“Say it,” he demands, pouting and leaning up closer to her, between her legs.

“You’re ridiculous,” she mutters, the corners of her lips turning upwards.

“Okay, but you’re smiling,” Will says, like it’s revelatory but he’s still cautious, and she understands because he’s getting it, that this can’t all be fixed in one night but they can be _certain_ and she can be okay, too, if only for a little while. “Say yes.”

“Yes.”

Soon, she’s going to have to ask him if he’s okay. Because one time she stopped doing that, so angry about Brian and his article, and he wound up in an emergency room getting his stomach pumped—it’s a pointed reminder that she’s no good at this, and that they might not remember how to be, but they can get there.

“We’ll figure it out,” he murmurs, tracing the diamond band on her ring finger with his thumb. “A day at a time. Then once we get good at that, we’ll move to a week at a time.” Pushing himself up off the floor, he nudges her back to her side of the bed and under the covers. “Now please, you’ve been taking care of my sorry ass for years, so would you let me take care of you?”

“If I say no will you compare me to bacteria again?”

Rolling his eyes, he gets under the covers with her when she grabs his arm and doesn’t let go. “Just get some sleep so I can’t compare you to bacteria.”

“No promises.”

“Shut up.”

MacKenzie doesn’t know how much she’s lost, and knows she won’t know for months, maybe even years. But she starts to fight the anxiety twisting in her limbs and clawing at her stomach, the creeping certain dread that first pooled when she noticed the shot clock on the Stomtonovich interview. She’s lost, and she’s going to keep losing.

But here’s something she’s gained.

“Tell me you love me again,” she whispers, her lips moving against his collarbone.

Will kisses her temple, fisting his hands into the fabric at her waist.

“I love you,” he answers, nothing like a duty, everything like it’s something he wants to do. “Very, very much.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	3. Second Midnight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **A/N:** So there's a theme here, which I kind of over-thought and I don't know if anyone cares. But for all the sunrise portions you can expect some sort of Mac/Will reunion and for the midnights, some kind of separation. Anyway. May 2013, and a certain scene that quite a few people have been asking for. Extra thanks to Emily and Pippa for this chapter, where I earn my M-rating for this fic. (Although this chapter in and of itself is probably Explicit.)

The candles they lit when the power first went out have burned down, leaving their bedroom in darkness. Not that the darkness is the reason that Will’s hands don’t leave her body, nor his lips. Or hers, as they lay together under helplessly wrecked sheets waiting for their bodies to recover enough to continue what they started hours ago.

Nearly an hour after he arched, groaning, under her and reached to still her hips, his fingers are still sliding through her wetness, his tongue circling a nipple. There’s a paucity of their usual post-coital chatter, the meaningless barbs and soft spoken teasing and occasional policy debate. Instead he seems intent on committing as much of it as possible to memory, tasting her and touching her and smelling her. If in the coming weeks anyone sees in the insides of her thighs, they’re liable to believe that she has some sort of bruising disorder; he spent almost an hour with her legs over his shoulders, explaining in a voice octave lower than usual that he’ll miss the _taste_ of her the most.

Kissing his way up to her neck he shifts her on top of him and presses his fingers inside of her, curling them forwards until a new pressure builds between her legs and she shudders. Taste, touch, scent. Sight, if MacKenzie is figuring correctly, is next. So she plants her hands on Will’s chest and pushes herself up, straddling him, and his hands.

There isn’t much to see; the only light in their bedroom is the ambient light from the city streaming in through the curtainless windows. Although, she supposes as she leans back to plant her hands on his thighs, at this angle she should be visible enough. His face isn’t, covered by shadow.

Not that it bothers her; she knows him well enough to be able to go by the way he touches her alone. (Or the way his breathing changes, the tilt of his chin, the way his voice will drop an octave.) And on a level, she knows that this is a show. _Yes, I’m scared,_ he muttered pointedly as he got her into bed. _So don’t do anything to up the ante while I’m gone, you’ve already gotten prison beaten,_ as he rubbed his thumb over the jagged scar stretching up the left side of her stomach. _I need you all in one piece for when I’m a fucking basket case when I get out._ So it’s a show, creating something big enough that he won’t be able to lose track of it after he puts himself into contempt tomorrow.

A show, but not entirely, as she tries not to cry.

(The last time she and Will were separated, she almost died. She knows it’s an entirely irrational fear, but anxiety pools in her belly and wells into fear and she’s afraid, for him for tomorrow, and for herself and for all of them, when Lucas Pruitt signs the contract of sale.)

Grinding down onto his fingers she doesn’t hold back the sounds escaping her throat, doesn’t try to control the movements of her hips, just braces herself and lets him work her over. _It’s for him,_ she thinks. He circles her clit with the index and middle fingers on one hand as he thrusts the same fingers on the other up into her, hooking and twisting and she can _hear_ how wet she is. _It’s for him._ She’s not scared at all.

(Mac knows he can handle this, has handled far worse than this. But she loves him and she’s pretty sure loving someone means being willing to lay down all their burdens or take them on and it’s only made worse by the fact that she knows that’s _exactly_ what Will is doing. What she would do, if she had better timing.

Or maybe not better, just different. She fought for Neal’s story, too.)

But she focuses on the things she’ll miss ( _ten days_ , she thought at first, but now with Neal on the run and having met Lilly in person and vetted the story, it’s the _but up to six months_ that scares her) like the callouses dotting his fingertips, dexterous fingers well-practiced on the guitar, the physicality of him. From experience, she knows it’ll be easy enough to see his face, hear his voice. But to be unable to take his hand, or lean her head on his shoulder, or do _this…_

She feels him begin to harden behind her, and she reaches back to take him in hand. He groans, and it doesn’t take him long to start thrusting his hips up in time to the movements of her hand, already in time to the movement of his own.

Nearing her climax, she lifts herself up higher onto her knees and takes him inside of her. Both of their bodies stutter; his hands frame her hips, fingers curling into her skin as she slowly takes him in. Her head tipping back, she rests her hands on top of his as he fills her. Feeling her pulse pounding through her lower limbs, she exhales raggedly, trying to hold off from orgasm.

Will’s hands don’t stay on her hips, sliding up the curve of her waist to her shoulder blades, pulling her down so he can kiss her again. It’s a better angle—her clit pressed against the ridge of his pelvis, his erection hitting the mass of nerves a few inches inside of her with every pass—and she moans into his mouth, rolling her hips forward to capture the sensation. Capture it, hold onto it.

He doesn’t make her chase it, instead moving his hands back down to steady her before planting his feet on the mattress to thrust up into her. If it wasn’t so dark in their bedroom she’d be watching his face, so instead she breaks their lips apart to put her voice in his ear.

“I love you,” she breathes, and then his name.

Her forearms are bracketing his head; one of his hands comes up to clench into her hair at the base of her skull, tacit encouragement to keep talking. His own breathing is harsh, barely controlled.

“Oh god,” she moans, shivering. “Fuck, _Will.”_

Because here they are again, at the hour of separation. Better prepared this time, she’ll admit, and with some forewarning. But still, how it can only take _two weeks_ for an entire life to fall apart. She doesn’t want him to be alone in a cell. And while she may be better at it, she doesn’t want to be alone either.

(Not that MacKenzie could possibly know that she won’t be. Like with so many things, this night comes down to coincidence and contingency. The adhesions and scar tissue from the stabbing have made her cycle irregular and long and for no particular reason at all, she’s ovulating on day twenty-one of thirty-eight and so no—

 _She_ won’t be alone.

But at first, she’ll write it off as stress. But she went off the pill while in Iraq and while it was a form of contents insurance it was also _hard to get_ and she was self-loathing but she wasn’t looking for anyone to get into bed with, either. She learned that lesson the first time. With Wade it was condoms and now with Will it’s just nothing, but they’re careful during what they _think_ is going to be two weeks before her period but they’re definitely _not_ careful tonight, and besides the surgeon said.)

First her thighs begin to lose feeling, and then her toes, and her legs go slack as he continues to drive his hips into hers. She doesn’t know how much time she has with him left, but less than a day. “I love you,” she cries out again, and wonders with the last synapses firing cogently in her brain if this would hurt less if she didn’t agree with what he was doing so damn much.

“Love you,” he answers breathlessly, wrapping an arm around her lower back to anchor her.

Tears, sudden and strong, choke her voice for a moment.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” she manages to say, after some time.

Pressing the slant of her nose to his cheekbone she pushes herself up onto her hands, arching her back as the feeling recedes from her limbs, signaling what she now knows is going to be a bone-shaking orgasm.

“Everything—is gonna—oh god, _fuck,_ Will—”

Her mind doesn’t go blank, but rather all her emotions compress down into one singular thought:

_I love you._

Groaning her name, Will follows her. And when her legs collapse, he rolls them onto their sides, his hips still jerking into hers. Her hands find purchase in his hair, and she holds herself against him as tightly as possible as her body quakes.

The tears come, then.

“Mac, hon?”

She held Jim after he was shot. She’s seen a truly absurd amount of young men die. She’s attended an astonishing amount of funerals in three years’ time. She doesn’t know why Will going to prison is fucking her up so badly.

The light shifts, and she can see Will’s face as he combs her hair out of her face. His eyes are soft, expression eager and concerned.

“If you’re going to jail just to get my approval, I swear to god, I’m gonna kick your ass,” she mutters, still fighting to get her breath to even out.

Sighing, Will flops onto his back next to her.

Mac pillows her head on his arm, rolling towards him. She wants to hear it at least once, or tomorrow she’s calling Molly to tell her that she knows the name and occupation of Neal’s source.

His hand finds its way back to her dampened hair, his fingers absently working through it.

“Has it crossed your mind,” he says, almost like he’s humoring her. But he’s not, because she knows _that_ tone of voice and this is something different, something more insecure. “That maybe I do _get something_ out of being the person you think I’m capable of being?”

Sniffling, she turns gingerly onto her side. Sensation is returning to her legs and she knows she’s going to be sore in the morning by the way her muscles protest, aftershocks still rippling through them.

“You and I have both been through worse things that federal lock-up, and we both know I’ll be fine,” he continues, staring up at the ceiling. “Am I scared? Yeah, a bit. Having served jail time isn’t something I really wanted in common with my dad. I know what it did to him and fuck if I know what it’ll do to me, although I’m not getting locked up for domestic A and B and I’ll be in solitary, so at least... ”

Voice drifting off, he lifts his head, craning his neck to kiss her forehead.

“At least what?” she asks, leaning her forehead against his chest when his head returns to the pillow. She knows more about who John McAvoy was now than she did a year ago, knows about the arrests and the prison sentences and the months Will and his little brother and sisters spent in the foster system, no one able to take all four of them, before finally landing back with their mother who got so financially desperate at the end of John’s time served that she let him come back into the house, every time.

Will doesn’t have to prove to her or to _anyone_ that he’s nothing like his father, either.

“I’ll have you waiting for me, on the outside, if only because your wedding dress is non-refundable at this point,” he says, sighing again.

Mac squirms slightly at the stickiness coating the insides of her thighs; she should get up. But she figures the sheets are already ruined, and she’d probably going to trip over some construction material on her way to the bathroom.

“I’m sure I could find a buyer. It is Elie Saab, after all,” she retorts. And then, because she’s never been any good at letting this sort of thing lie, “You’re nothing like your father. You know that. You’re going to prison for Neal, for god’s sake.”

He shrugs, the movement of his fingers through her hair slowing.

“I don’t like that I’m leaving you to deal with Pruitt on your own. I know that you can, I just—”

“You take care of Neal, I’ll take care of everyone else,” she murmurs. “Plus, I have Charlie.”

It won’t be easy, handling the acquisition of ACN by Lucas Pruitt while trying to keep Sloan in Will’s chair and keep ACN Digital as Neal’s domain in his absence and in general keep the target off all of their backs, and she’d much rather do it with Will by her side (well really, she’d rather not have to do it at all, especially now that the Lansings are finally on their side) but if this is what it takes to keep Neal out of Leavenworth, then so be it.

They just want Neal to be able to come home, for everyone to be safe.

(She has a feeling she’ll be calling vendors and the caterer sooner than later, though, and sending out cancellations to everyone who RSVP’d. She knows exactly how stubborn Will is and if their wedding has to be rescheduled, then that’s what happens.

It’s not like her dress doesn’t have sleeve options.)

“I’ll visit you, as often as I can,” Mac promises. “Pruitt can go fuck himself if he complains about me disappearing during the middle of the day to make visiting hours.”

Will snorts. “He’ll probably just send press after you.”

“Well, one of us does have to look good in front of the cameras, and with you behind bars…” she teases, finally getting up to use the bathroom.

“Funny,” he says, making a half-hearted attempt at fixing the sheets.

Standing at her side of the bed, she watches him for a moment in the darkness, and he watches her. And in that moment, a piece of her, separate and apart, joins with a piece of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	4. Second Sunrise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **A/N:** I've had the nastiest cold the last week, which has made it such a bitch to write. Anyway, I did finally get this section done. Takes place right after the end of "Oh Shenandoah", so I'm certain you're all smart enough to figure out what it's going to be about. Thanks to Emily, Meg, Pippa and the rest of you lot for reading and encouraging and prodding me to finish. 
> 
> Also, because I am truly that anal-retentive, I've decided that Will and Mac's new apartment is in [Hampshire House](http://www.150cps.com/index.php) for a few reasons: 1. The views of their apartment from "Boston" appear to overlook Central Park, 2. Their apartment has a fireplace in it and the molding and general style appears to Pre-War, 3. They do strike me as Central Park South kind of people, and it's not too far from the AWM building. There is a Hampshire House apartment listed on [Sotheby's](http://www.sothebysrealty.com/eng/sales/detail/180-l-1182-c8rl3g/hampshire-house-aerie-new-york-ny-10019) right now, asking price $13 million, so it's in the McAvoy price range...

They manage to make it in through the front door by twilight. They’ve gone from the detention complex to Roosevelt Hospital to the newsroom to the Skinner residence to JFK Airport, before finally arriving at their own apartment on deadened feet.

“It has walls.”

His voice is hollow, but there is a ring of humor to his pronouncement.

On sore feet, she walks over to the panel of switches, flipping on the living room lights. “And electricity.”

Something like wonder animates him when the apartment is illuminated. It’s not yet finished, and no pre-war Manhattan co-op is renovated in under sixty days, but the walls and moldings are finished and there are appliances in the kitchen and the first of their furniture has been delivered from storage. It’s not finished, but it’s starting to look like a home.

There’s a brief moment of wonder, but then it breaks.

Warmly-painted walls and finished hardwood floors can only do so much; Will knows his way to their bedroom, and she doesn’t follow him when he begins to walk in that direction. Since his release shortly before midnight they’ve spent every minute together consoling the staff and fighting with Pruitt and consoling Nancy and Katy and Sophie and picking up Jim and Maggie and she just needs to _breathe_ for a moment, because she doesn’t think she’s actually living any of this, just spectating as it goes by in front of her face, as Will squeezes her hands until her fingers go numb.

Sloan has a job. She has a job. Will is out of prison. Jim and Maggie are… well, she’s not certain but she thinks Jim has finally gathered his rosebuds. Neal can come home.

And Charlie is dead.

Stepping out of her heels, she wanders into the kitchen (soft yellow tiles and polished railway sleeper counters and off-white beadboard cabinets) and places her purse down on top of the island counter, the leather soft and silent against the wood. Then breathes again, reaching into her purse for her BlackBerry, and calls Jim.

It almost goes to voicemail before he picks up, breathless with his greeting, and she almost laughs.

“No I—I just forgot to ask. Or, well, tell you. Will and I are going with Nancy to the funeral home at ten, since Katy’s driving down to pick Sophie up from her DC internship tomorrow. I need you—”

“To do the first rundown meeting,” he finishes for her.

“Yeah,” she says on a shaky exhale, eyes scanning the darkened kitchen, cataloging things to show Will. Not now, probably not even tonight. In the coming days, when every stretched minute feels real again. “We’ll be in when we can.”

“No rush.”

He sounds distracted, and in the background, she hears a faucet running. She half expects to hear the shower in the master bathroom running, but when she walks back into the living room to peer down the hall to their bedroom, all the lights are off.

“Jim?”

“Yeah, Mac?”

She does the calculus, and comes up short. If she and Will are only going to get three hours, then Jim’s not going to do too well either. “You and Maggie actually get some, you know, sleep.”

Jim snorts. “We slept on the plane.”

Among other things, she thinks, considering the fact that Jim and Maggie strolled off the terminal holding hands.

“Okay,” she says lightly, but in a tone that she _knows_ Jim knows means that he _will_ be interrogated about this at a later date in time, at whenever she needs amusement.

(God knows she’s going to need it.)

He mutters some smartass reply, and she doesn’t wait for anything else before hanging up; she and Jim stopped saying goodbye to each other on the phone years ago, sometime between getting fired on by Taliban insurgents and tracking protests in Kabul. They stopped comforting each other over the deaths of their friends at some point during their time in Peshawar.

Walking barefoot to the bedroom (she can do that now without worrying about putting a nail or a screw through the soles of her feet, and intends to make a joke about that as soon as she finds Will, wherever he is) she tries to make sense of what’s happened in the past twelve hours, sort out her thoughts enough to be able to sleep, perhaps, even if only for a little bit. But it doesn’t make sense, from Charlie in the ambulance putting his hand to her heart moments before his own stopped, before they could even pull into the emergency bay of Roosevelt Hospital, to the call from Rebecca twenty minutes after the doctor pronounced him that Will would be released, pending paperwork being processed. Calling Leona, calling Nancy, calling Sloan, before they all arrived to find Charlie’s body, pallor grey, in the trauma room, all attempts to save his life stopped.

It all happened so _fast._

Pruitt arrived on their heels, preparing to argue with Charlie on his way to the surgical ward, and found her instead. And Charlie’s death had clicked with every war-honed instinct that she has, how to battle and function in combat, how to protect herself and her staff and her _story._

At first she thinks he might be asleep, collapsed onto his side of the bed still fully-dressed, until she notices that his shoulders are shaking.

“Honey?”

Leaving her BlackBerry on top of the dresser she crawls onto their bed, lying half on top of him, pressing her face into the back of his neck. Will’s been in shock, she thinks. How could he not be, going from fifty-three days in solitary to the press of their grieving staffers, her fight with Pruitt, the shell-shocked Skinners. She’s gotten too good at watching people die, he spends his time trying to hold onto people too tightly.

Saying nothing, she blinks back her own tears.

He slides his fingers between hers, and brings their hands up towards the pillows until her arm comes around him. Taking the hint, she wraps her other arm around his shoulders, kissing the skin behind his ear.

Three years ago she’d ignore her grief, collect her notes, and file everything away.

Three years ago she was in Islamabad on the verge of a nervous breakdown, so she figures that wasn’t a particularly _adept_ way of dealing with emotional trauma.

“He loved you,” she whispers. “He was so proud of you, you know that.” John arguably didn’t (at least not in the right way), and wasn’t, and she has no idea if that means that this hurts more or worse or less. “And he knew you loved him.”

(In the ambulance she had apologized, rambling like if Charlie knew just how sorry she was, he’d live, as if she didn’t learn seven years ago that being sorry wasn’t enough. Maybe, she figures, it’s the part of her that will always be a child, applying the words _I’m sorry_ like a remedy.

Sedated as he was, Charlie feebly lifted his hand and took hers, and pressed their fingers against her heart. His blood pressure dropped shortly thereafter, after first it spiked and his oxygen saturation dipped far too low, and that was it.)

There’s probably more she can say, but at five o’clock in the morning, she’s not going to find the words. He’s still shaking. Crying, but quietly, and it can’t help that he’s been locked in a cage for the past two months with guards watching his every move. But she’s his wife, and they’re home, and he can cry for however long he needs to.

“Can I get you anything?”

He brings her hand to his mouth, kisses her palm.

“Just stay.”

So she does, turning her cheek to rest against his shoulder blade, watching the sun peek through the skyline at the edge of Central Park. His breathing remains uneven, keeping her awake. Not that she’ll compare how they’ve spent the past fifty-three days, but with all her grief for Charlie there’s also relief. It’s ended badly, but it’s ended, and maybe now her insomnia and headaches and nausea will stop, the unsettled symptoms from her last bout of traumatic stress abating and she’ll help Will past this, too, they’ll be able to finally _move on._

“It’s not fair.” His voice is low, but almost petulant. “I mean, what the _fuck_ was the point? We never even ran the story. And Genoa—if we hadn’t run that then the twins couldn’t have afforded the takeover. What the fuck—”

“Charlie wanted us to do it.”

“It wasn’t worth it.”

Another deep, shaking breath from him, and she kisses his neck.

“We got the story out. People are still reporting on Kundu. That’s what he wanted to do, report the news.” And at the end, he was so worried they’d never even get the chance, she thinks. Kissing Will’s neck again, she rolls off of him, keeping their hands clasped between them. “That’s what he wanted us to do.”

“So what? Neal could go to Venezuela and the network gets sold to an emotionally and journalistically illiterate prick—Sloan and Don told me about the way Pruitt talks to you, I know what shit he’s been pulling,” he says, clearly angry with himself and with the whole series of events, and turns onto his side to face her. “I’ve been hanging out in downtown correctional for apparently no fucking reason.”

“So that Neal didn’t go to jail for espionage,” she says gently, pulling the cuff of her blouse up over the ball of her thumb to wipe his eyes.

(Jim’s called Neal. She saw to it, as soon as he was in the car with them. As softly as possible, she’s reassembling their lives, bringing everyone back to their proper place. She can’t, and she knows that she can’t. But she’s better equipped at dealing with that reality than Will at the moment, so she can do it for the both of them until he’s ready.

Leave the porch light on, bring the kids home, keep them safe.

As terrible as it is, Charlie’s heart attack will give her enough leverage with Pruitt, she thinks. As terrible as it is, but it’s what Charlie would want. It’s not like he never lied, never manipulated, always thinking on the greater good.

There are things that she’s prepared to do.)

 _Besides,_ she thinks, but doesn’t say. _You would have done it anyway, to protect any of them. Just like me. We’ve done it before. We’ll do it again._

“Snowden wasn’t even on the goddamn plane,” he mutters, squeezing his eyes shut, falling onto his back and letting go of her hand.

Her mouth shapes into a sad smile, and she props herself up onto her elbow. “Sometimes that’s just how things work out.”

Raggedly exhaling, he breathes out the last of it. “What was the point, MacKenzie?”

She could tell him the story of the stabbing, but he’s heard it before, and the story of the five months it took for every shred of sense and meaning to unravel into despair and casual substance abuse and a complete lack of self-care, but he’s been there before too. And they won’t go there again.

(Her arms are empty, but they’re asking about fertility specialists. Their Hampshire House Penthouse has three bedrooms, not two, even though one of them is being made into a home office, and a wide window seat opening out onto the park that she’s spent months imagining what it would be like to be wholly sleep-deprived, with an infant in her arms, overlooking their view of the city with her oblivious child while tucked into the cushions and pillows.

If not fertility specialists, then adoption.

Regardless, she makes a mental note to call Catherine—her Navy doctor bearing bad news, now in private practice—and schedule a physical as soon as possible. Its stress, she _knows_ it’s stress, but she’s been feeling run down lately and she should go to head off Will’s impending neuroses, and prod him into getting a physical as well.)

Will looks up at her, looking at her desperately, like she has all the answers.

“I don’t know,” she murmurs, cupping his cheek, and then finds the words and sets the spinning. “But I do know that Pruitt is gonna hire someone who isn’t Charlie as the next president, and we’re gonna have to mourn Charlie, then get ready to fight to keep doing the news the way he wanted us to. It’s gonna be up to you and me, now,” she says forcefully, but gently. Because he’s all in and she’s all in, but sometimes things still need to be said out loud, like wedding vows. “Sometimes things just don’t make sense, so you—you just keep going. Until they do. Fight ‘em til we can’t. So that Neal can come home and we can all keep coming home.”

Charlie brought her home. So it’s her job now.

“It’s time for Don Quixote?” he asks, wrapping his arms around what of her is in reach. He looks like he might cry again, but so might she.

And does— _gently,_ gravity pulling her tears from between her lashes—biting her lip. “So it would seem.”

“Our odds are pretty slim.”

“I’ve never cared much about odds.”

Her gaze is drawn to the sun now coming through their bedroom windows, and she considers climbing off him to pull the light-cancelling curtains over them so they can claim the precious little sleep they’ll be getting. Considers it, and then remembers Will hasn’t slept in a room with windows in almost two months. Considers it some more, until Will’s hand comes to her face, forcing her to look at him. Face stricken, he scrutinizes her, what she knows is a haggard visage.

“You’re not allowed to die first,” he whispers, terrified.

(She’ll find a way to see Catherine today.)

Leaning down, she slants her mouth against his, shivering when his hands move to the zipper of her skirt, pulling it down.

“I’ll do my best,” she answers, pulling back.

Lethargically, they pull the clothes off one another, and fall asleep with warm skin pressed against warm skin in-between clean sheets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	5. Last Midnight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **A/N:** And now back to your regularly scheduled programming now that I'm done with my distractions/Meg's birthday fic. I would like to thank MS Word for continually trying to tell me that "farmboy" is two words, not one. Not so much of a "thanks" as "this is a stylistic choice, thank you." Also, I'm choosing to ignore that Sorkin can't Google how counting in pregnancy works and autocorrecting that Mac is actually nine weeks along and I'm shoehorning in some headcanon to make sense of things in general in re: the pregnancy and Mac's apparent Catholicism. 
> 
> And thanks to Pippa as always for her encouragement. :)

Their last broadcast together is fairly unspectacular, and it’s not until it’s over that any of the staff (besides Jim, of course, who shows little fanfare in regards to his promotion and treats her own as the natural progression of things) realizes that in order to be the new President of ACN that she needs to _leave_ them, even if only for an upstairs office. But it’s a change, and there’ll be inertia and resistance even if no one actually resists, because that is just how things go.

MacKenzie, for one, is no longer living thirty feet from the life she could have had.

She _has_ the life (Will, a home, their baby on the way—never in the abstract, never the husband, the apartment, the child) and now she needs to box up her things and somehow bring herself to go through Charlie’s things and pack up _his_ life and assume his role. She’s not sure of how she feels about it yet. She can’t say no to Pruitt, wouldn’t say no, anyway, despite the lingering anxiety that she has to be in the control room with Will in order to have any part of him at all.

Not that any of what’s going through her head explains why she and Will are sitting on the floor of Charlie’s old office with the overhead lights off. _That_ can be explained by the fact that Pruitt has been looking for her since the end of broadcast, and she’d rather spend her last night as _News Night’s_ EP with her staff, who went off to drink hours ago, and so instead with Will.

She’s lost count of how many times he’s kissed her since they decided to hide up here, but he does it again, looking at her like she hung the moon. “So you’re—”

“Nine weeks.”

His hand spans from the bottom of her ribcage to the bottom of her belly, fingers flaring out over where their baby definitely isn’t, yet, and she’s wondering if he’s just imagining what she’ll look like in a few months, what he’ll be able to feel.

“Which means the baby’s due—”

She smiles, shaking her head; she knows he’s already done the math. “Late January. January the twenty-third.”

“And you’re feeling okay?” Pulling her more into his lap, he brings his mouth to her temple but doesn’t do more than that, burying his nose in her hair.

Bringing her knees in closer to her chest, she toes off her shoes.

It’s a strange night, wedged between endings and beginnings. Today they buried Charlie, and tomorrow someone will start packing up this office. On Monday, they’ll go for the first ultrasound, and she’ll move her things up here. MacKenzie thinks that by now she should be used to these loud and sudden moments that explode around a change, but her mind is giving her nothing to reconcile her grief and her elation.

She’s guessing Will feels the same.

“A little tired, and I guess the headaches and throwing up—it’s been infrequent, really, I mean kind of a bitch but — it wasn’t just stress, like I thought.” She snorts, almost remarking on how the lack of nosebleeds should have made her question things. Migraines, nausea, and nosebleeds have always been the triangle of anxiety for her, and she’ll never forget the look on Will’s face when she sneezed blood in front of him for the first time four days after they retracted Genoa. Still, she shrugs. “I mean, my mother had an easy time with her pregnancies. She had _five_ children, so of course she had an easy time, otherwise she would have stopped after me.”

“Why you?” Will asks, eyebrows creasing.

(There’s a large part of her that wants to pick up the phone and call her mother, time zones be damned. But she was the one who handled the familial aftermath—on both sides; two parents and five sisters and two brothers and four in-laws and eleven nieces and nephews—of their quick City Hall nuptials and Will’s incarceration and the subsequent cancellation of the wedding.

Right now their precious secret is contained, even if dozens of people have heard, it’s still hemmed inside the newsroom. They’ve known for barely twelve hours and maybe before all of this Mac would have been the kind of woman to pick up the phone and inform her family immediately, but after the past few months the baby is something she wants to stay between her and Will for a while yet before broadcasting the news across oceans and continents to their far-flung family.)

She laughs, rubbing the soles of her bare feet over the carpeting she thinks she might have replaced with something more child-friendly. “Why keep going if you’ve already achieved perfection? I mean, obviously after the disaster of my brother they had to keep going anyway.”

He shakes his head. “Of course.”

And as it has several times since Catherine called her this morning, elation suddenly gives way to worry.

“I missed my period and I didn’t even consider I could be pregnant. I’ve missed like five weeks of vitamins and I’ve, you know, gone to the bar with the staff and—”

But Will is, despite his outbursts of neurosis, dedicated to maintaining morale.

“Hon, the doctor told you your chances were astronomical,” he says, and somehow the sentiment merits another kiss and she wonders if he’s not just making up for not being able to touch her for fifty-three days, or if it’s also compounded by the fact that at their first opportunity to discuss her pregnancy she was hauled off by Leona Lansing. “It’s a strong pregnancy even though apparently your hCG levels means it could also be twins but we’ve already decided to cross that bridge if we get to it so let’s just presume for the time being your body is good at, you know, making babies—”

 _Yes,_ she thinks, _lets, because if its twins on the first go we might lose our minds and I think Pruitt is already going to have an aneurysm when he hears the news._

“I would skip them all the time over in the Middle East and that was from anxiety,” she continues explaining anyway despite of him, “and, well, I was underweight too, but mostly it was the anxiety—”

Balking, Will pulls his face away from hers. “Me being in prison reminded you of reporting from a warzone?”

“Well, Pruitt. And the distinct lack of you,” she answers, waving him off. “No, it wasn’t as bad as reporting from holes in the ground. The staff stepped up. I was just worried about you, and the show, or if you’d come back to rubble instead of a studio because I blew up the place rather than let Pruitt ruin it.”

“Ah.”

In the relative darkness, they descend back into silence. The expression on Will’s face shapes itself into something softer, until he’s no longer looking at her face and instead where his hand rests over her stomach, his thumb tracing circles into her hip. There are a few more weeks until she begins to show, she figures. Perhaps a month, maybe more since she’s tall. Three weeks until she’s out of the first trimester, at least, not that they need to worry about making an announcement.

But things might feel steadier.

This new position is uncertain and she looks around the room, wondering if she’ll ever be able to see this as _her_ office, or if she’ll spend out the rest of her employment at ACN feeling like an imposter. While she’s never shirked from difficulty before, nor pain and blood and the rest of it, she thinks she’ll feel steadier after Monday, three weeks from now, seven months from now, a year.

There’s so much for her to live up to, but all she wants to know is what Charlie would have said if she had gotten the chance to tell him that she and Will are having a baby.

Lifting her chin, she sees that he’s looking at her like a question.

“We’re having a baby,” she says, resting her hand on top of his.

She’s choosing to believe that the fact that they’ll be doing this together is enough.

A wide grin roots itself on his face. “We’re having a baby. You’re having _my_ baby.”

Lacing her fingers through his, she leans up to rest her forehead against his. “Well, I’m sure some people will be suspicious unless little McAvoy arrives precisely on time or a little early, but I’m pretty sure that you are correct.”

His grin doesn’t change. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” she replies, and then more thoughtfully, “We’re gonna have to repaint the second bedroom.”

“Any color you want.”

“There’s a lot of furniture to buy. And toys. Books. An entire wardrobe’s worth of clothes, for me and for the baby—”

“This is going to replace the wedding planning, isn’t it?” he asks, sounding like he wants to be exasperated by the prospect but can’t be yet. “Please tell me it’s not going to take seven weeks to decide on the lacquer on the crib—which, by the way, I will be putting together myself so don’t even think about ordering something that comes with assembly people because upfront I don’t trust them.”

“Is this a Nebraska thing?” she queries.

But she knows; they’ve both veered towards catalogue domesticity in many ways, the idea of the American Family. For all that Will is a farmboy, he grew up in a four room glorified shack and shared a bed with his smallest sister to keep warm when his father drank the gas money or was in prison and couldn’t provide for his wife and children at all. (Although if he suggest that they leave Manhattan again she will forcibly remind him that their child _will_ have a front yard, and it’s called Central Park.) She’s concerned with her own wistful recollections from childhood of rooms and houses that were never actually her own, friends who would be halfway around the world without warning, and a four-year stint in a DC Catholic boarding school with her younger sisters after their father was posted in East Berlin in 1987.

“How long until we find out the sex?”

“Another ten weeks,” she answers, constructing a mental picture of the spare room in the apartment in her mind, the wide windows and high ceiling and built-in bookshelves. “I’m thinking green for the nursery, regardless. I don’t think I could handle a room that’s blindingly monochromatic, pink _or_ blue.”

“Green is nice,” Will says, entirely too willing to concede.

Laughing, she leans her head back against the wall. “Mint or moss or kelly or peridot—”

“Here we go.”

He mutters something good-natured about invitations and bathroom tile and place settings, but this isn’t the wedding. It’s their child, and they both know that they’re going to spend the rest of their lives like this, deciding what’s best for their child down to room colors and laundry detergent and crib bedding.

God-willing.

Charlie’s death is the constant pang, the reminder of how easily _the Lord taketh away._

Regardless, the child springs fully-formed in her mind—a girl with honey blonde hair and dark eyes, tall and long-limbed and fiercely intelligent but perhaps more level headed than both of her parents, or a boy with dark hair and blue eyes and a smile like Will’s who inherits their better natures without any of their greater demons.

That’s a goal, MacKenzie thinks, even if she has no idea what this office will bring come Monday.

“This feels so surreal,” she murmurs, hardly recognizing that she’s said the words out loud.

Not that it matters, around Will.

“I know.”

“I could have figured it out a month ago. Charlie could have known,” she says, fighting to keep her voice even. Blinking back tears, she lets out a short laugh. “God, though. I think you would have found a way to tunnel your way out of prison.”

He finds that less than funny, and she bites her lip down on her grin.

“I would have given Lilly twenty-four hours,” he tells her solemnly.

_“What?”_

But then she remembers, _Someone would have to be torturing you._

“Twenty-four hours to out herself as our source, before naming her. If you needed me, if something went wrong with the—” Shaking his head, he cuts himself off. It seems neither of them are willing to entertain that prospect, least of all today. Instead, his free hand rises from her thigh to her face, cupping her cheek. “I’m going to do anything and everything for you. Both of you. I mean it.”

His face is eager and earnest and heavy with the weight of what today has wrought and what the rest their lives might bring, he strokes his thumb over the curve of her face, eyes searching her own.

Sighing, she presses their lips together. Lightly, until she feels his muscles uncoil, and he exhales heavily through his nose.

“I don’t doubt you,” she whispers against his mouth. “We’re gonna be good at this.”

They have a history of being good at the things they do together, after all.

Her time on _News Night_ might be over, but the real show has just begun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	6. First Sunrise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **A/N:** I could not have written this chapter without the help of Emily and Pippa with all their newborn/breastfeeding knowledge. Thank you so much, both! 
> 
> And thus concludes this fic. I hope you've all enjoyed it! Thank you to everyone who has left comments and kudos.

She wakes up to a quiet apartment and aching breasts. Rolling towards her nightstand, she opens her eyes to the large red numbers on her alarm clock. 6:44 AM, almost a full three hours since Will took the baby and disappeared into the living room so that she could get some sleep, especially since Charlotte wasn’t having any.

Allowing herself to remain between the sheets for a few more moments, she unfurls her limbs and stretches, trying to ignore how sore she still is four days after giving birth. And then the silence truly begins to worry her, so MacKenzie pushes herself up out of bed, grabs her robe off the footboard at the end of the bed and, shoving her arms through the sleeves, sets out in search of her husband and child.

Barring some other catastrophe that could be causing the house to be silent for the first time since they brought her home less than twenty-four hours ago, Charlotte will be crying to be fed soon. Or just crying, in general. She was quite content when they brought her home in the early afternoon, and remained quite content to just be held or in the bassinet until eight or nine, at which point anything less than being walked around the apartment was a reason to scream, her tiny hands flailing and her tiny legs kicking.

Swaddling helped briefly, but eventually Will just told her to try to get some sleep and he’d bring Charlotte to her when she started showing signs of hunger.

She’s brought to halt in the doorway into the living room, and then smiling tiredly she heads back into the bedroom for her BlackBerry, switching on the camera function on her return. Will is asleep half reclined on their couch, ostensibly drooling as he’s prone to do, his hands cradling Charlotte to his chest. An awake Charlotte, too, her dark blue eyes open and alert. An awake, but thankfully calm Charlotte who has her fingers in her mouth.

First silencing the flash, she snaps a few pictures, Charlie’s voice ringing in her mind as it has been the past seven months. _They’re only that small once, and then before you know it, they’re going to college and driving you insane by majoring in philosophy._

Pocketing her phone, she checks to make sure that the water bottle she stashed in the bookshelves in the window seat is still there before scooping Charlotte up, fixing the nursing blanket to be tucked in more tightly around her. Picking up a burp cloth off the end table she pads silently to the window, easing herself down into the cushions. The nursing pillow (one of the few stashed throughout different rooms) is wedged behind the curtain where she left it.

They’re still trying to get this breastfeeding thing right, her and Charlotte. It’s infinitely less difficult than the first few times, and she tries to feel which side of her chest is more engorged before pulling down the left side of her tank top’s loose neckline. So it takes a moment (several, in fact) the baby rooting and Mac trying to position the baby correctly against her breast and on the pillow before she’s latched, lips flanged out over nipple.

Mac’s eyes stay on Charlotte, the back of an index finger trailing down the curve of her cheek, until Charlotte begins to swallow and she can feel her milk let down.

“That’s it,” she murmurs, fussing over how the knitted cap lays, her fingers light over her daughter’s soft fontanel and fragile skull. Charlotte blinks, her eyes darting in no particular direction before exhaling through her smudge of a nose with what Mac thinks might be satisfaction.

It’s taken less than a week for seven years of her life to at last piece together from a million little fragments she was never certain would fit. But she’s better prepared for this than she was seven years ago. More determined to have it, and hold onto it after losing so much.

Almost Will, more than once. Almost her life, on the Islamabad pavement, and in the slow-creeping months after that, almost her career. Definitely her sanity, at times along the way. Her credibility, after Genoa, until the Boston bombings. Almost ACN, and again almost her sanity as she’s fought with Pruitt. Charlie, who’s left the largest hole behind, his absence felt more than the rest as she fights her way into being respected as his replacement.

(Even seven months out from relinquishing the control room to Jim, the loss still stings at times.)

But she’s put it back together again, her million little pieces, now illuminated as a million particles of light.

Just three weeks ago she saw Brian at a holiday luncheon for the media elite (he, of course, had been brought along as someone’s guest) and he saw her, thirty-six weeks pregnant in a dark red dress sitting at a table with the Presidents of CNN and NBC. He’d waited until she was alone before sneering down at her— _I never thought of you as someone’s mother, though I guess you’ve gotten everything you’ve ever wanted_ —in a tone of voice that clearly told her what Brian thought she deserved. And cupping her hand over where Charlotte was kicking, she smiled, and said yes, she had gotten just that. _And how are you, Brian? Because I’m incandescently happy._

And now she’s exhausted and even her bones are sore, but she’s still so unbelievably happy, falling more and more in love with Charlotte every day.

Sighing, she feels herself begin to relax. Sinking into the mass of pillows lining the window seat she pulls the thick wool blanket up over her legs and curls her toes into the soft fabric upholstering the plush cushion. The baby squirms, bunching up her knees within the blanket, and a moment later Mac feels her stop feeding. When she looks down, she sees that Charlotte is trying to orient her sucks and her breaths, and she uses the baby’s self-induced break to switch her to the other breast.

Squinting up at her, Charlotte burrows into her, head turning as she searches for her nipple. Again it takes a few times to get her to latch correctly, but when she does her small fingers flare open before fisting again, catching the lapel of Mac’s navy terry cloth robe.

She checks her phone: 7:08 AM. Even despite the early hour there is already an influx of new messages and emails for her to read, but anything of importance is being sent to Don’s inbox and everything else Mac is content to ignore for a long while yet.

Jim and Maggie are stopping by in the afternoon with food, which Jim informed her was, according to Maggie, non-negotiable. The food part, not the visit, but Maggie’s flight from DC gets in around noon and she wasn’t a part of the waiting room gaggle the night Charlotte was born. Neal, last she heard, will also be tagging along.

Nancy Skinner had been promised a visit as well, and Leona. Don and Sloan were by last night, also with food. Her parents’ flight isn’t for another few days, and her nearest sibling is in Berlin. Will’s all have children, and can’t exactly disappear for a week, but there are plans for March, when they’ve tentatively scheduled the baptism.

Until then she only wants to hear from the family she’s bound together through means other than blood. (Charlotte herself excepted.) Although, she’ll admit, she and Jim _are_ bound by a lot of blood. Just not in the usual way.

MacKenzie strokes Charlotte's face, marveling both at her solid weight against her chest, but also just how tiny she is, how delicate, how fragile. It’s illogical, in a way. Four days ago, Charlotte endured labor just as she did, and made it through just fine. In the days following, she’s found that the most common facial expression on her daughter is one that closely resembles alarm, but MacKenzie understands. Re-entry from a warzone into civilian life was also tough, although she supposes that what her baby has done is something quite the opposite.

“You’re going to have to forgive me, once you’re old enough to Google me,” she murmurs, the baby continuing to eat from her mother’s breast, unknowing. “I’ve made a lot of terrible mistakes. But I don’t regret a single one, sweetheart. If I hadn’t made those mistakes I wouldn’t be here with you, right now.”

The baby’s nose wrinkles up and a few seconds later, she sneezes. Humming, Mac reaches for the burp cloth, wipes the baby’s face, and gets her latched again.

“You wouldn’t have the family you have now. You wouldn’t be named after a man you’re going to hear about when you're a bit older. You wouldn’t be here at all. And I’ve gotten quite fond of you in the few days you’ve been here,” she says, looking up at the sunrise beginning to whitewash the horizon when her eyes blur with tears. Just a moment, and then she’s looking down at Charlotte again. “One day you’ll probably make some terrible mistakes yourself. And I won’t speak for Dad, even though I usually do, but I promise I’ll help you fix them. No matter what happens. Just please inform me of what the problem is before you do something rash like run away to Peshawar.”

Right now her problems are plenty, but simple. She’s hungry, or wet, or uncomfortable. She wants to be held, or rocked, or swaddled. And she remembers the mild panic from last night when Charlotte _would not stop crying_ and she resorted to calling her mother and waking her up only to be reminded that, _You, dear, were also a crier. Good luck._ Just how long, Mac wonders, until Charlotte’s problems become nebulous and unsolvable and more than just crying, how long until she fails and needs to learn how to start herself again?

She promises she’ll be there, not a continent away.

“My parents have a few spares, but I don’t think I could bear the thought of anything happening to you,” she whispers, looking up to see the sun peak through the skyline. “So no pressure, or anything, but I’m going to request that you avoid reporting from warzones. At least until Dad is dead. You might give him a heart attack and he’s pretty good to have around.”

Blissfully unaware of the world that awaits her, Charlotte snuffles and wriggles and closes her eyes.

The sun continues to rise slowly in the pale winter sky. Central Park begins to fill, and as she waits for her infant to finish eating, she watches the paths become dotted with runners in neon, Manhattan professionals in their charcoals and blacks and tans, tourists in puffy coats and no direction.

Charlotte’s feeding begins to slow, deep breaths within long breaks in sucking that becomes less and less purposeful until she settles entirely, fast asleep. Gently, Mac takes the breast from her mouth and tugs up her shirt before moving the cloth and Charlotte to her shoulder, moving her back down to cradle in her arms after she burps. As sunlight fills the window, her tiny face is bathed in a golden glow.

Her voice is pitiable so she hums (nothing in particular) rocking the sleeping infant herself, forgoing the foldable bassinet in the corner. For how long she stays like that she’s uncertain; she hears the coffeemaker turn on and begin to brew as it’s programmed to—at least 7:30.

She’s beginning to consider turning to make sure Will is still breathing, or something else approximate to being alive, when a flash goes off in her periphery.

“How long have you been awake?”

Moving closer to the window, she makes room for him to sit next to her. Kissing first her cheek, and then the top of Charlotte’s head, he puts an arm around her and settles in beside her.

“Coffeemaker,” he says, voice dulled by exhaustion. "You?”

“About an hour. Maternal instinct and the rest of it.”

She rests her head on his shoulder, allowing him to press his cheek against her hair. How well the three of them fit together almost has her in tears; she catches her breath, folds her shoulders in, and tells herself that this is the first day of the rest of her life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


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